


Liminal Children

by ultranos



Category: Frozen (2013)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-13
Updated: 2014-03-13
Packaged: 2018-01-15 13:22:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1306372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ultranos/pseuds/ultranos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They exist in the place the other does not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Liminal Children

**Author's Note:**

> I owed [counterpunch](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Counterpunch/works) a warm-and-fuzzy fic. I entirely failed, so you get this instead. Unbeta'd.

There is a knock. The rap of a fist on painted wood, made of sturdy oak. The door exists between them, separating one from the other.

They exist in separate places. This, Anna thinks, has always been true. She has been not-Elsa since the moment she was born. To find herself, to define herself, one could see how she needed to become something different. People define them by what they are not: composed, controlled, poised against enthusiastic, outgoing, awkward.

The truth of the matter is that Anna spent so long chasing Elsa's ghost that for a long time, her sister exists only in the empty spaces she left behind.

There are days spent in the portrait room, where a girl sat chattering to the pictures on the walls, cataloging every detail she could remember, the memories growing dimmer despite her efforts. How do you define a ghost? The phantom texture of a dress sleeve between her fingers, tugging on the fabric to drag the owner on some long-forgotten adventure? The faded yellow paper full of childish drawings, later becoming letters to a stranger never sent? Or the half-remembered scent of rain after a storm and the whisper of a child's laughter as she chased her around the garden?

Anna becomes well acquainted with ghosts, seeing as how she's related to one. It becomes hard, Anna thinks, to love a ghost. There's too much space, and too much that can't be touched. There's nothing to define them, only the absence of things. No life, no reaction, no response. There's only so much one can give until there's nothing left. But sometimes, she'll catch a glimpse of blue, solemn eyes watching from a window before vanishing to elsewhere.

Elsa and elsewhere. She makes the joke once, to herself, late at night. The next morning, she claims she had no idea why the pillow was wet.

It's hard to love a ghost.

And then, later, her entire family is made of ghosts. She remembers dinners surrounded by empty chairs, a dinner for one at a table for four. 

And still, as ever, there is the door.

\---

There is a a knock. The rap of a fist on painted wood, made of sturdy oak. The door exists between them, separating one from the other.

At some point in her life, Elsa realizes, she started defining herself in relation to Anna. It did not happen at the moment her parents think it did. No, it happened much earlier. Elsa was a protector, because Anna needed one. Elsa took on the duties of heir seriously, so Anna could be unburdened.

They exist in the place the other does not. For years, Elsa carves herself out a tiny kingdom in the places where Anna does not go. Expeditions to the library or the kitchens when Anna is not there. Hours spent watching her sister from her window when she can, and seeing her sister in memories and dreams held tight between her fingers. Casual updates from her parents, when she can work it into conversation. And the tales of Anna's days from Anna herself through a door, tales that grew less and less frequent as time went on, until they stop altogether. (Because empty spaces can't answer back.)

A pitiful pile of scraps that Elsa hordes like a dragon, turning each piece over and slotting it into a metaphorical set, a system of equations that, if only she could find enough of the variables, would equal "Anna".

(It's really not that simple. But maybe, maybe maybe maybe, if she can make the numbers work, find the shape of things, put herself into proofs and rules, she could define herself enough to figure out how to exist in the other spaces.) (She never can prove that "Elsa" equaled "negative Anna".)

Elsa struggles to define herself. She only knows herself in a set of negatives, a logic puzzle that does not make sense. How does one define the absence of something?

She locks herself away to give Anna the freedom to move wherever, to define her own identity so that Elsa may use it to find hers. 

The door sits between them.

\---

There is a a knock. The rap of a fist on painted wood, made of sturdy oak. The door exists between them, separating one from the other.

Here, at the end, in the space between the open doorway, they meet.

There are no ghosts. There are no cold equations. There is only them. And that's enough.


End file.
